Top three jobs in exercise and fitness
Personal Trainer - offer individual and small group coaching sessions.
Group Exercise Instructor - deliver exercise & wellness classes such as group cycling, body conditioning, dance fitness, water workouts, yoga, Pilates or tai chi.
Fitness Manager - manage the activity in a fitness facility supporting their instructors to deliver activities for customers.
What can I do?
There are a broad range of jobs in exercise and fitness. You can work with people from all walks of life to help and support them achieve their exercise, fitness, and wellbeing goals.
From working with mums and toddlers in the park, to supporting someone waiting for surgery, to the more traditional set-up of delivering a fitness class in a gym or community hall. The opportunities are vast.
Below are a few of the different types of jobs in exercise and fitness.
Personal Trainer
The role of a Personal Trainer is to coach clients (on a one-to-one and small group basis) towards their health and fitness goals through the planning and delivery of creative and personalised exercise programmes and instruction, nutritional advice and overall lifestyle management.
Responsibilities often include:
- Analysing clients’ needs, adapting and modifying guidance to motivate clients to positively change their behaviour and improve their overall wellbeing.
- Referring clients to relevant professionals for specialist information and guidance when required (e.g. physiotherapist, registered dietician, medical specialist).
- Building and retaining a stable client base through a comprehensive understanding of business, finance, sales and marketing.
Many Personal Trainers are employed by a fitness or leisure centre or, once qualified, can be self-employed and should expect to work hours that may include evenings, weekends and public holidays.
Gym Instructor
The role of the Gym Instructor is to engage, facilitate, educate, and support clients in the gym environment.
Responsibilities often include:
- Playing a key role in customer experience and member retention, motivating clients to adhere to exercise to support long-term, health-related behaviour change.
- Utilising technical knowledge to conduct assessments, consultations, and inductions, providing sound demonstrations of gym-based exercise and equipment.
- Conducting pre-exercise screening and advising when individuals should be referred to other exercise or health professionals.
- Planning safe, effective and progressive gym-based exercise programmes to meet clients’ needs and goals.
- Providing positive customer experiences by routinely ‘walking the gym floor’ to engage and build rapport with clients and to support safe and effective exercise techniques.
- Managing relevant health and safety and cleaning within the gym environment.
- Working independently and as part of a team.
- Being the first point of contact, providing high levels of customer care, service excellence and managing the overall customer experience.
- Working over a seven-day week that may include weekends, early mornings, evenings and public holidays.
Health Navigator
Health Navigators signpost and support new or returning participants to physical activity or other lifestyle interventions. They routinely provide inclusive, person-centred brief advice to the public, having the knowledge, capacity, and ability to signpost to other local services and professionals where appropriate.
An intervention could range from an opportunistic brief advisory conversation of 30 seconds to an extended intervention of approximately one hour.
Group Exercise Instructor
Group Exercise Instructors are fitness professionals who teach, lead, and motivate groups of individuals through intentionally-designed, pre-choreographed exercise classes. Categories include: strength and body conditioning (e.g. BODYPUMP™, body conditioning, core stability), cardiovascular (e.g. Spinning®, indoor cycling, step aerobics, BODYATTACK™), holistic (e.g. yoga, Pilates, BODYBALANCE™, tai chi), dance fitness (e.g. Zumba®, BODYJAM™, street dance, dance aerobics), water workouts (e.g. Aqua Zumba®, aqua aerobics) and dance (e.g. ballroom, Latin, country and western, folk).
Responsibilities often include:
- Providing instruction across many class types and equipment sets, from aerobics, step and group exercise.
- Choosing the music and designing the choreography.
Senior/Chartered Physical Activity and Health Practitioner
Chartered Activity and Health Practitioners specialise in working with people with long term medical conditions, normally have specialist knowledge in a specific long-term condition such as, cancer, cardiac rehabilitation, neurological conditions, pulmonary rehabilitation or falls prevention. They understand how exercise can support people with long-term conditions.
